Address Check - Melissa Data

MELISSA DATA ADDRESS CHECK
Address Checking Process Explained
AddressCheck verifies and standardizes address data against the most current reference data
from the U. S. Postal Service®.
The programming logic used by AddressCheck is CASS Certified by the USPS. This stringent
certification ensures the quality of the data that is returned by the AddressCheck service and the
certifications are renewed every calendar year.
Steps to validate an Address
1. Decide on a target area to search - Use the ZIP Code/City & State Postal Code/Municipality/
Province fields to decide where to search for an address. If all three components agree the
match is attempted. If they don't agree, the logic favors the City & State over the ZIP/Postal
code field. If City & State cannot be reconciled, it uses the ZIP/Postal Code field.
2. Parse the address - breaks it into 9 possible categories of Range, Predirection, StreetName,
Suffix, PostDirection, SuiteName, SuiteNumber, PMBName, PMBNumber.
3. Look for that street name within the search area.
4. If street name is found, check the remaining address components such as directionals, suffix
and ranges. Fix what it possible and return back status codes indicating the results.
5. If street name is not found, use a combination of reparsing and fuzzy matching to locate candidate
records until a most likely candidate is found. Return back status codes indicating the
results.
6. Address Check service will Find Suggestions for candidate records. The Service returns possible
correct addresses if the logic was unable to verify or correct the submitted address.
The basic methodology for Address Check is using an exact match the input address is referenced
against the USPS or CanadaPost database. If the address cannot be matched the street name is
then soundexed and the address parsed attempted till it can either be phonetically matched or fail
matching. The Soundex algorithm works by stripping out consonants from street names and then
trying to match the remainder. Directionals, Street Suffixes and Street Names can be rectified in
some cases as well, but never an Address Range. The only time an Address Range can be fixed if
it is Rural Route renumber or LACSLink address or when the Address is coded by chasing the
Base alternate record. The City and State can be corrected only when the ZIPCode is valid and
the ZipCode can be corrected if the City State is valid.
Addresses are always returned standardized to postal specifications. Street becomes ST, Road
becomes RD, etc: Standardization means that some conversion was done on the address (for
example, changing Post Office Box to PO Box or abbreviating street suffixes)
Secondary Addresses
Secondary addresses include suite numbers, unit numbers and residential apartment numbers. It
could also refer to a private mailbox (PMB) at a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency (CMRA).
The secondary address can be passed to Address Check at the end the first address line, as the
second address line or via the Suite property. The National Postal database identifies certain pri-